As I was just searching on the internet for information about Charles Dickens, I found an amazing site on which a large variety of letters by various authors have been posted. To me, as I’m doing research on the relationship between Dickens and his wife Catherine, it proves very useful since much of their correspondence has been placed on this site. Since there are a lot more writers on this site to be found, including parts of their correspondences, I would like to share this site with you.

(Mr and Mrs Dickens)

Another thing I found out is, that recently a letter (see below) was found from Dickens to his lawyer, Mr Ouvray, in which he proposes a settlement for his wife of 600 pounds a year. (He has even underlined the sentence to emphasise his decision.) It was known that Dickens separated from his wife and left her for an 18-year-old actress: Ellen Ternan (see picture below). However, since Dickens didn’t want to attract too much attention to it, there hadn’t been found documents recording the actual amount of money offered. He definately wanted his marriage to be over, which is underlined by the words he uses in this letter when referring to his wife: she and her. He doesn’t mention her name.

(Letter to Mr Ouvray, Dickens’s lawyer)

(Ellen Ternan)

(source: www. telegraph.co.uk)